As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
One type of information handling system is a server, which is a processor-based network device that manages network resources. As examples, a file server is dedicated to storing files, a print server manages one or more printers, a network server manages network traffic, and a database server processes database queries. A Web server services Internet World Wide Web pages.
In recent years, servers have been implemented as “blade servers.” Blade servers are so named because they employ server blades, which are thin, modular electronic circuit boards containing one or more microprocessors, memory, and other server hardware and firmware. Blade servers, which are sometimes referred to as a high-density servers, typically include a space saving, rack-based chassis that accepts multiple server blades. Blade servers are often used in clusters of servers dedicated to a single task. For example, a blade server may function as a web server by servicing web-based requests addressed to one or more universal resource locators (URLs). In this implementation, the blade server may route individual requests to different server blades within the blade server based on factors including the current loading of individual blades and the locality of information required to respond to a request, all in a manner that is transparent to the user.
In addition to server blades, which provide the core processing resources of a blade server, blade servers may also include a management resource, power supply resources, I/O resource, and environmental control resources such as fans. A management resource enables remote access to the blade server and to the individual server blades within the blade server. Management resources enable an administrator to power on, reboot, and power down individual server blades as needed or in response to warnings, failures, and the like.
Power management and power conservation is an increasingly important consideration in the design and implementation of information handling systems in general and blade servers especially. Power consumption is not only costly, but it also generates heat that must be dissipated to maintain performance parameters as well as the electrical and mechanical integrity of the server. Traditional blade server implementations impose power restrictions on individual blades based on static power levels provided by the blade to ensure that power capacity is not exceeded. Moreover, the static level provided the blade in such implementations is typically based on a theoretical maximum power draw based on the blade's maximum configuration. Because the power management implementation is founded upon the maximum power draw, power allocation is necessarily overly conservative, resulting in denial of power up requests or forced performance throttling of server blades when, in reality, sufficient power is available.